by Tad Williams
The innkeeper’s frown turned into a smirk. “Aren’t you very high and cocksure for a marsh-man? Well, get on with you, then. Go to some other inn and see if they’ll treat a Wrannaman as kindly as Charystra has.”
Tiamak choked back a furious reply. He knew he must not let his anger get the better of him. He was being dreadfully cheated by this woman, but that was how things always went when Wrannamen put their fortunes in the hands of drylanders. He had already failed his tribe, on whose behalf he had sworn to go to Nabban and argue their case against higher tribute. If he were thrown out of Pelippa’s Bowl, he would fail Morgenes as well, who had explicitly asked for him to stay at this inn until he was needed.
Tiamak offered a short prayer for patience to He Who Always Steps on Sand. If his staying in such a place was so important to Dinivan and Morgenes, couldn’t they at least have sent him money with which to pay for it? He took a deep breath, hating to grovel before this red-faced woman.
“It is foolish to fight, good lady,” he said finally. “I am still expecting that my friend will show up, bringing more gold.” Tiamak forced himself to smile. “Until then, I think I still have some little bit of my two Imperators remaining. Surely it is not all spent quite yet? If I have to leave, someone else will be earning gold for giving their best accommodations to me and my friend.”
She stared at him for a moment, weighing the advantages of throwing him out against the possibility of future money-gouging. “Well ...” she said grudgingly, “perhaps out of the goodness of my heart I could let you stay another three days. But no meals, mind you. You’ll have to come up with more coins, or else find your own food. I set a lavish table for my guests and can’t afford to give it away.”
Tiamak knew that the lavish table consisted mostly of thin soup and dried bread, but also knew that even such meager fare was better than nothing. He would have to feed himself somehow. He was used to going long on little provender, but he was still quite weak from his leg wounds and resulting illness. How he would love to bounce a sling-stone off this woman’s mocking face!
“Very fair, my lady.” He gritted his teeth. “Very fair.”
“My friends always say I’m too good.”
Charystra swaggered back into the common room, leaving Tiamak to cover his head with his odoriferous blanket and contemplate the grim state of his affairs.
Tiamak lay sleeplessly in the dark. His mind was spinning, but he could think of no solution to his problems. He could barely walk. He was stranded without resources in a strange place, among bandit drylanders. It seemed that They Who Watch and Shape had conspired to torment him.
The old man Ceallio grunted in his sleep and rolled over, his long arm flopping heavily against Tiamak’s face. Painfully thumped, the Wrannaman moaned and sat up. It was no use being upset with the ancient simpleton: Ceallio was no more to blame for their uncomfortable proximity than was Tiamak himself. The Wrannaman wondered if Ceallio was upset at having to share his bed, but somehow he doubted it. The cheerful old man was as guileless as a child; he seemed to accept everything that came his way—blows, kicks, and curses included—as acts of fate, unfathomable and unavoidable as thunderstorms.
Thinking of evil weather, Tiamak shivered. The hovering storm that had turned the air of the Wran and all the southern coast hot and sticky as broth had fallen at last, drenching Kwanitupul in unseasonable rains. The normally placid canals had turned choppy and unpredictable. Most ships rode at anchor, slowing the business of the thriving port city to a crawl. The heavy storm had also nearly choked off the flow of new visitors, which was another reason for Charystra’s unpleasantness.
Tonight the rain had stopped for the first time in several days. Not long after Tiamak had crawled into his insufficient bed, the constant rattle on the roof had suddenly gone silent, a silence so deep it seemed almost like another noise. Perhaps, he thought, it was this unaccustomed silence that made it so hard to sleep.
Shivering again, Tiamak tried to pull his blanket closer about him, but the old man beside him had caught up the whole tangle in a death-grip. Despite his advanced age, the fool seemed to be a great deal stronger than Tiamak, who even before his unfortunate brush with the crocodile had never been robust, even by the standards of his small-boned people. The Wrannaman ceased struggling for the covers; Ceallio gurgled and murmured in the throes of some dream of past happiness. Tiamak frowned. Why had he ever left his house in the banyan tree, in his beloved, familiar swamp? It was not much, but it was his. And unlike this drafty, damp boat-house, it had always been warm....
This was more than just night-cold, he realized suddenly, wracked by more shivers. There was a chill in the air that pierced the chest like daggers. He initiated another doomed struggle for blankets, then sat up again in despair. Perhaps the door had been left open?
Giving vent to a full-throated groan of anguish, he crawled away from his bed, forcing himself to stand. His leg throbbed and burned. The tosspot healer had said that his poultices would take the pain away soon enough, but Tiamak had little faith in such an obvious drunkard, and so far his doubts had been borne out. He limped slowly across the rough wood floor, doing his best to avoid the two upended boats that dominated the room. He managed to stay near the wall and thus evade these large obstacles, but a hard stool leaped up before him and cruelly battered his good shin, so that for a moment Tiamak had to stop and bite his lip as he rubbed the leg, holding in a screech of pain and anger that he feared would have no ending. Why had he and he alone been singled out for such ill treatment?
When he could walk once more, he continued with even more care, so that his journey to the door seemed to take hours. When he reached it at last he discovered to his immense disappointment that the door was shut; there seemed little more he could do to prevent himself from spending a sleepless and freezing night. As he thumped his hand against the frame in frustration, the door swung open to reveal the empty pier outside, a dim gray rectangle in the moonlight. A blast of chill air rolled over him, but before he could grasp the elusive handle and pull the door closed again, something caught his eye. Baffled, he took a couple of limping steps out through the doorway. There was something odd about the fine mist that floated down through the moonlight.
A long moment passed before Tiamak realized that it was not rain that dotted his outstretched palm, but rather tiny flakes of white. He had never seen this thing before—no Wrannaman ever had—but he was unusually well-read, and had also heard it described many times in his student days. It took only a moment for him to understand the significance of the downy flakes and the vapor that rose from his own lips to drift and dissipate on the night air.
Snow was falling on Kwanitupul, in the heart of summer.
Miriamele lay in her bed in darkness and wept until she was too tired to weep any longer. As Eadne Cloud rocked at anchor in Vinitta’s harbor, she felt loneliness pressing down on her like a great weight.
It was not so much Cadrach’s betrayal: despite her moments of weakness toward him, the monk had shown his true colors long ago. It was rather that he was her last link with her true self, with her past life. As if an anchor-rope had been cut, she felt herself suddenly adrift in a sea of strangers.
Cadrach’s desertion had not been a complete surprise. So little good feeling remained between the two of them that it seemed only circumstance had kept him from deserting her earlier. She looked back on the cool deliberateness he had shown in selecting his traveling cloak before they left the boat and saw that he had clearly anticipated this escape, at least from the moment they had been summoned down to Vinitta. In a way, he had tried to warn her, hadn’t he? On the deck he had asked her to listen, saying “this last time.”
The monk’s betrayal was unsurprising, but the pain was no less heavy for that. A long-anticipated blow had fallen at last.
Desertion and indifference. That seemed to be the thread that ran through her life. Her mother had died, her father had changed into something cold and uncaring, her uncle Jo
sua had only wished her out of his way—he would deny it, no doubt, but it had been plain in his every word and expression. For a while she had thought Dinivan and his master the lector could shelter her, but they had died and left her friendless. Although she knew it was not even remotely their fault, she still could not forgive.
No one would help her. The kinder ones, like Simon and the troll or dear old Duke Isgrimnur, were absent or powerless. Now Cadrach, too, had left her.
There must be something inside of her that pushed others away, Miriamele brooded—some stain like the dark discoloration in the white stone canals of Meremund, hidden until the tide went out. Or maybe it was not in her at all, but in the souls of those around her, those who could not stay rooted to obligation, who could not remember their duty to a young woman.
And what of Aspitis, the golden earl? She had little hope that he would prove more responsible than the others, but at least he cared for her. At least he wanted her for something.
Perhaps when all was over, when her father had reshaped the world in whatever way pleased his corrupt fancy, she would be able to find a home somewhere. She would be happy with a small house by the sea, would gladly shed her unwanted royalty like an old snakeskin. But until then, what should she do?
Miriamele rolled over and pushed her face into the rough blanket, feeling the bed and the entire ship moving in the sea’s gentle but insistent grip. It was all too much, too many thoughts, too many questions. She felt quite strengthless. She wanted only to be held, to be protected, to let time slip away until she could wake into a better world.
She cried quietly, fretfully, anchorless on the edge of sleep.
The afternoon slipped past. Miriamele lay in the darkness of her cabin, wandering in and out of dreams.
Somewhere above, the lookout cried sunset; no other sound intruded but the lap of waves and the muffled cry of sea birds. The ship was all but deserted, the sailing men ashore in Vinitta.
Miriamele was not surprised when the cabin door quietly opened at last and a weight pressed down on the bed beside her.
Aspitis’ finger traced her features. Miriamele turned away, wishing she could pull the shadows over her like a blanket, wishing she were a child again, living beside an ocean that was still innocent of kilpa, an ocean upon whose waves storms touched only lightly and disappeared at the sun’s golden rising.
“My lady ...” he whispered. “Ah, I am so sorry. You have been badly treated. ”
Miriamele said nothing, but his voice seemed a soothing balm to her painful thoughts. He spoke again, telling her of her beauty and kindness. In her feverish sadness the words were little more than nonsense, but his voice was sweet and reassuring. She felt calmed by it, gentled like a nervous horse. When he slid beneath the sheet she felt his skin against hers, warm and smooth and firm. She murmured in protest, but softly, with no real strength: in a way, this, too, seemed a kindness.
His mouth was at her neck. His hands moved over her with calm possessiveness, as though he handled some lovely thing that belonged only to him. Tears came to her again. Full of loneliness, she let herself be drawn into his embrace, but she could not suffer his touch unfeelingly. While a part of her yearned only to be held, to be drawn into a reassuring warmth, a safe harbor like the one in which Eadne Cloud rocked gently at anchor, untroubled by the storms that swept the great ocean, a different self wished to break free and run madly into danger. Still another shadow huddled deeper within her, a shape of dark regret, tied to her heart with chains of iron.
The thin light leaking in at the doorframe caught glimmering in his hair as Aspitis pressed himself against her. What if someone should come in? There was no latch, no latch on the door. She struggled. Mistaking her fear, he whispered soothing things about her beauty.
Each curl of his hair was intricate, textured and individual as a tree. His head seemed a forest, his dark form looming like a distant mountainside. She cried out softly, unable to resist such implacability.
Time slid by in the shadows and Miriamele felt herself drifting away. Aspitis once more began to speak.
He loved her, her goodness and wit and loveliness.
His words, like caresses, were blind but enflaming. She did not care for flattering talk, but felt her resistance melting before his strength and sureness. He cared for her, at least a little. He could hide her away in darkness, pull it around her like a cloak. She would disappear into the deeps of a sheltering forest until the world was right again.
The boat swayed gently on the cradling waters.
He would protect her from those who would harm her, he said. He would never desert her.
She gave herself up to him at last. There was pain, but there were also promises. Miriamele had hoped for nothing more. In a way, it was a lesson the world had already taught her.
Awash with strange new feelings, not completely comfortable with any of them, Miriamele sat quietly across the dining table from Aspitis, pushing food from one side of her plate to the other. She could not understand why the earl had forced her to come sit with him in the brightly candlelit room. She could not understand why she was not even slightly in love.
A soldier rapped at the doorway, then entered.
“We’ve caught him, Lord,” the guardsman said. His satisfaction at having redressed the earlier error of the monk’s escape was plain in his voice. Miriamele, seated across the table from Earl Aspitis, felt herself stiffen.
The guardsman stepped aside and two of his fellows brought Cadrach in, slumped between them. The monk seemed to be having trouble keeping his head up. Had they beaten him? Miriamele felt a sickening pang of regret. She had half-hoped that Cadrach would just vanish, so that she would never have to see him again. It was easier to hate him when he was not around.
“He’s drunk, Lord Aspitis,” the guardsman said. “Stinking. We found him in the Feathered Eel, down on the east dock. He’d already bought a place out on a Perdruinese merchantman, but the fool got pissed and diced it away.”
Cadrach looked up blearily, his face slack with despair. Even from across the table, Miriamele could smell the stink of wine. “Was ‘bout t’win it back, too. Would’ve.” He shook his head. “Maybe not. Luck’s gone bad. Water’s rising ...”
Aspitis rose and strode around the table. He reached out a hand and grasped the monk’s chin, pressing with his strong fingers until the flesh bulged between them. He forced Cadrach’s pink face upward until their eyes met.
The earl turned to Miriamele. “Has he tried to do this before, Lady Marya?”
Miriamele nodded helplessly. She wished she were somewhere else. “More or less.”
Aspitis returned his attention to the monk. “What a strange man. Why does he not just leave your father’s service instead of sneaking away like a thief?” The earl turned to his squire. “And you are sure nothing is missing?”
The squire shook his head. “Nothing, Lord.”
Cadrach tried to pull his head free from Aspitis’ restraining fingers. “Had m‘own gold. Stole nothing. Need t’get away ...” His eyes fixed uncertainly on Miriamele, his voice took on a note of added desperation. “Dangerous ... storm will get us. Danger.”
The Earl of Eadne let go of the monk’s chin and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth. “Afraid of a storm? I knew he was not a good sailor, but still ... that is very strange. If he were my liege man, his back would be flayed for this trick. Still, the fellow shall certainly not be rewarded for deserting his innocent ward. Neither shall he share a cabin with you any more, Lady Marya.” The earl’s smile was stiffy reassuring. “He may have gone mad, or have conceived some drunken fancy. He says danger, but he is the dangerous one as I see it. He will be confined on the Eadne Cloud until I return you to Nabban, and we shall then hand him over to Mother Church for discipline.”
“Confine him?” Miriamele asked. “That is not ...”
“I may not leave him loose to plague you or worry you, my lady.” The earl turned to his guardsmen. “The hold will do ni
cely for him. Give him water and bread, but put the leg irons on him.”
“Oh, no!” Miriamele was genuinely horrified. However much she despised the monk and his cowardly treachery, the thought of any living thing forced to wear a chain, trapped in a dark hold....
“Please, my lady.” Aspitis’ voice was soft but firm. “I must have order on my ship. I gave you sanctuary, and this man with you. He was your guardian. He betrayed your trust. I still am not sure he has not stolen something from me, or perhaps thinks to sell some intelligence of my mission here in Vinitta. No, I am afraid you must leave such men’s business to me, pretty Marya.” He waved his hand; Cadrach was led out, staggering between his escorts.
Miriamele felt her eyes blurring with tears. They spilled over and she lurched suddenly from her chair. “Excuse me, Earl Aspitis,” she mumbled, feeling her way along the table toward the door. “I wish to lie down. ”
He caught her before she reached the handle, grasping her arm and pulling her smoothly around. The heat of him was very close. She averted her face, conscious of how foolish she must look, eyes red-rimmed and cheeks wet. “Please, my lord. Let the monk go.”
“I know you must feel quite lost, pretty Marya,” Aspitis said softly. “Do not fear. I promised that I would keep you safe.”
She felt herself yielding, becoming pliant. Her strength seemed to be draining away. She was so tired of running and hiding. She had only wanted someone to hold her, to make everything go away....
Miriamele shivered and pulled away. “No. It is wrong. Wrong! If you do not let him go, I will not stay on this ship!” She pushed out through the door, stumbling blindly.
Aspitis caught her long before she reached the ladder to the deck. The sea watcher Gan Itai was crooning quietly in the darkness above.
“You are upset, Lady,” he said. “You must lie down, as you said yourself. ”
She struggled, but his grip was firm. “I demand that you release me! I do not wish to stay here any longer. I will go ashore and find my own passage from Vinitta.”